Draco PoV

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful and we safely made it back to our little hideout. At least I thought so. I kind of zoned out, whilst thinking about ways to lure out Omega. Tracking him down would be nigh impossible, even with Cythias proficiencies in cyber-espionage.

I had considered several approaches, but I saw problems with most, if not all of them. They all relied on Omega being uncharacteristically incompetent. Planning for your opponent to be stupid is never the move, so I dismissed all of them.

As we touched down, I requested we all stayed in the ship for brainstorming.

“Can’t our AI just copy a plan of his schedule? Surely he has one of those?”

Blues approach looked promising at first glance, but Omega was very much a ‘Fuck you, I do what I want when I want’ kind of guy, so knowing his schedule wouldn’t be too helpful. Definitely not with gambling every advantage we had on it.

“Negative. The firewall of his personal network is too strong even for me. I could brute force my way through eventually, but not without being detected. It would also take multiple months, which is time I believe we do not have, considering Crimsons sister,” Cynthia added.

I had to think. How could I lure him out? If I were to announce that I’m alive and out for revenge, that would certainly attract his attention, but the problem with that was that it would be too obvious.

I might as well ask him “Hey can you go fall into the most obvious trap in the history of traps?”

It COULD work, but I didn't want a plan that COULD work. I wanted one that WOULD work. After lots of back and forth and lots of ideas that all had to be scrapped, it hit me.

“What if I send a message on an encrypted channel to someone, saying something Omega believes I would reasonably be saying? Like I don’t know, I could probably apologize to Fox’ parents for failing to keep their kid safe. Omega can’t know I know fox is alive.”

“But why encrypt it?” I could tell Blue didn’t have too much experience with mindgames.

“Well if I just send it unencrypted, I might as well send Omega a message saying ‘I have set up an elaborate scheme to kill you, meet me at x!’ I will encrypt it and I know for a fact that the empire can crack the code. They WILL know what I said and they will think it wasn’t intended for them. Not a lot of people know I’m a genius when it comes to IT-stuff, so it should fit the profile they have for me to use shitty encryption.”

It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but it absolutely had a chance of working. Everything I had to do was in character for me and, especially with Omega's tendency to underestimate everyone else's intelligence, I would say there’s about an 80% chance of this working.

It was risky, yes, but I was comfortable with the odds.

“Anyone have a better idea? Any thoughts on this?”

Crimson shook her head. “I don’t think there’s a better option available to us, unless you count storming the capital, which is basically suicide.”

It was settled. Unless we came up with a better course of action, we had a plan to lure out Omega. It would mean losing my trump-card of the empire not knowing I am alive, but Omega's death would be a bigger hit. Assuming I could actually kill the bastard.

That’s one problem down. Next problem: “How can we be sure Bob knows anything? And if he does, how do we confront him?”

“Leave that part to me. Bob is less important than Omega, his data far less protected. I should be able to copy his schedule without being detected,” Cynthia answered.

“And unlike Omega, Bob can’t just change it because he feels like it!” Cynthia butted in.

I nodded. “Seems like we have something resembling a plan. Look out especially for times when he’s on the move Cynthia!”

 

Cynthia POV

 

With that being discussed, I knew what I had to do. Sneak into imperial servers, grab a copy of Bobs schedule and get back here.

“I’ll be right back! It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Even accounting for latency.” I turned off my hologram as I said that, to fully focus on the task at hand.

“That being said, my full computing-power will be needed to break through their security, especially if I have to do it without being detected or leaving traces. I won’t be able to pick up on anything yall say while I’m gone.”

And just like that, I got to work. I still knew some ports that lead to imperial servers, but I had no way of verifying if they were still active. Aside from pinging them, of course.

I sent out a ping to every port I knew of, and before long, I got a response back.

It was from some sort of training-camp for especially (magically) gifted people, according to my list, but I didn’t really care about that too much. I DID care about it being a really high-traffic port leading into the inner systems of the imperial network.

I split a part of myself off and started making my way to the port, several hundred thousand data-packages walking around me in the same direction. They almost felt like Zombies and it did creep me out at first, but by now I was used to it.

And to be fair, these things had no free will of their own. All they could do was slowly zombie-walk towards the destination the last router they passed through set out for them.

I took the time to inquire about their contents, and sure enough, a not small number of the data-zombies had been sent more than once. Here came the ugliest part of this operation.

I picked out my target once I found one that had seven identical copies of itself walking right next to it. I disposed of one of them and grabbed the ID. As usual, none of the other zombies seemed to notice, which meant I had successfully acquired my ticket to get past security.

I walked up to the port and got in line. When it finally was my turn, the security program didn’t bother looking at me, and instead simply checked my ID and waved me through.

I was in. This was when the hard part began. I couldn’t just go use the search-function as that would leave traces. No, I had to go find it myself.

I looked around this gigantic array of data, that looked like a library and just wandered aimlessly, checking the category and folder-names of every file, but there didn’t seem to be an end to my search.

Until I found a folder called “Spec. Op. Robert “Bob” Grey” and inside of it, there was a file called “Schedule”.

I gave it a quick glance to check this was actually what I was looking for, before making a copy of it, and sending that copy back to my main self at the ship.

When that was done, and I received confirmation I had received the file, I went back to the port and removed any data about traffic coming from or going out to myself and then went dormant within the training camps server.

 

Crimson POV

It had happened exactly like planned: Draco went up front as our heavy-hitter - literally - and punched one of the vehicles until it stopped moving. Then, while he had their attention, I took out all the soldiers who had stepped out of the vehicle to confront Draco.

My marksmanship may not have been as good as Fox’, but given how Draco and Cynthia had chosen a really good spot for me to set up, I could absolutely hit my mark here. Even the weather conditions were nothing short of perfect. No wind, nothing to obscure my vision, just me, my targets and however many bullets I needed.

Shot after shot, bullet after bullet the soldiers died by my rifle. Draco kept pursuing the other vehicles, whilst I focused on the one he had stopped first: the one with our target inside.

“And eleven. That’s everyone” I all but whispered, before putting the rifle away into my storage dimension and making my descent down the mountain.

I was in no rush because Bob had no way of verifying that the sniper-fire had ended, so leaving the heavily armored craft might as well be suicide. He was a sitting duck. Thanks to Cynthia jamming all communications, he could do nothing but wait and pray one of the other vehicles in the convoy would make it to its destination and send reinforcements.

Draco would make sure that wouldn’t happen. And in the meantime it was my job to deal with Bob and ensure he couldn’t escape or fight back. Or at least keep him busy until Draco was done wrecking the rest of the convoy.

Normally I would feel very confident, engaging any opponent that wasn’t Draco or Omega in single-combat, but Bob had been through the same black-ops training that I had received. I could not afford to be careless.

“You can come out, I stopped shooting”, I shouted, once I was close enough to catch up to him, should he try to make a run for it.

I didn’t really expect an answer, but I received one anyway. In the form of gunfire. I swiftly evaded the plasma aimed at me, before taunting “I thought I was more memorable than this. You should know that you can’t really hit me with that stuff…”

Once again, my answer came in the form of an object being thrown at me. Unlike last time however, the object was one of the transporters doors.

I jumped over the door and grabbed my sais, preparing to inevitably clash with his longsword. In hindsight I should have known jumping over the door was exactly what he wanted me to do, because immediately after I jumped, Bob was there, slashing his sword at me.

I managed to pull up my sais just in time to block the blade, but the impact sent me flying all the same. Using my tail, I ensured I would land on my feet, but Bob wasn’t eager to give me any time to recover.

He had dashed after me, clearly intending to do the same thing again. However this time I wouldn’t be mid-air, so I’d have to handle the full brunt of his swing. I couldn’t let that happen, so I waited until he had committed to the swing before jumping behind him, twirling in mid-air to ensure I would face him at all times and finally throwing one of my Sais at his back.

I shouldn’t kill him, but nobody ever said anything about hurting or maiming him. My weapon struck true and embedded itself in his lower back, which caused him to grunt in pain.

When he turned around, however, he was grinning, to which I simply teleported the dagger back into my hand. His grin faded.

He kept trying to corner me, trying to overwhelm me with his superior strength, but to his dismay I was able to block, deflect or dodge every blow. Initially my plan was to quickly disarm him by using my sais to break his sword, however at the moment that was simply impossible.

There was no way for me to block his swings whilst also trapping his sword. I managed to inflict surface-level wounds occasionally, whenever he overcommitted, but those were few and far inbetween. 

But even so, slow and steady wins the race. The wounds may not be able to do much individually, but it was clear they were having a negative effect on his performance. His breathing got heavier, his attacks slower and weaker. It also helped that he hurled around about 4 times the combined weight of my sais.

However I did not allow myself to relax. I needed to be focused on this completely. He may be getting slower and a bit sloppy, but a single misstep on my part could still easily prove to be my last.

Not having any intention of letting this happen, I kept my senses as sharp as I could get them and focused my entirety on fighting. I deflected, I dodged, I blocked, I cut him whenever I found an opening.

I just needed to be patient. Before long he would be too exhausted. Too wounded. Too slow. Too sloppy. At that point I would catch his sword and disarm him.

He raised his sword up high. He wouldn’t possibly be that stupid, right? I got being desperate, but to throw away strategy entirely and telegraph a move like that? That was just delusional.

If I simply were to dodge his strike, it would take him a good second to get back into a guard-position. One second I would be sure to make use of. IF I dodged it. Which I wouldn’t do.

I grinned a bit, and thought “Oh you’re on!” to myself, before flipping around both daggers in my hand so they were facing downwards.

Waiting for the strike to come I crossed my arms and put as much reinforcement magic into my legs, arms and torso as I could. And sure enough a fraction of a second later the swing connected.

I grimmaced under the pressure. This was stupid. I dragged my arms away from each other, trapping his sword between the cross-guard of my sais and turned them as much as I could to apply pressure on the blade stuck between them.

His eyes widened in shock as he realized his blunder. I won.

I untangled one of my daggers and used the leverage I had on his sword on the other to move his sword out of the way. I needed him alive. But nobody ever said anything about intact.

Like an arrow my weapon flew towards his hands. He couldn’t use his sword to block, it was still trapped by my offhand. His only options were to sacrifice his hands or to let go of the sword.

He chose the latter. I threw his sword as far away as I could.

“Well then,” I said, pointing the tip of my own blade towards his neck, “We have some questions for you.”